I look at the phone.
Maeve is at the kitchen island in jeans and one of my sweaters with her coffee in front of her. Her frown is the one she gets when she’s thinking about going back to bed for the rest of the day. The grand jury was yesterday. Maeve has been entitled to going back to bed for the rest of the day. She’s been entitled to it since approximately one PM yesterday afternoon.
She looks up.
"What did ‘Mitéra’ want."
"Family dinner. Tonight at six. All of them. Cathleen flew in."
Maeve puts her coffee down. "Cathleen flew in."
"Yes."
"From Florida."
"Yes."
"For grand jury."
"For you."
Maeve doesn’t speak for a long beat.
Then she says, very quietly, "Okay."
She gets up. She walks around the island. She comes to me. She wraps her arms around my waist and puts her face against my chest the way she did in the corridor yesterday, only this morning the holding is for a different reason. Her mother flew up from Florida for the grand jury without telling her. Her mother has been at Eleni's apartment since six AM. Her mother is the woman who has been writing letters to the O'Brien matriarch for six years and is currently, this morning, drinking Greek coffee with my Greek mother in a Brookline kitchen.
Maeve says, into my shirt, "Of course she did."
"Yes."
"And she didn’t tell me."
"No."
"Because she didn’t want me to be worrying about her flying up while I was preparing."
"Yes."
"Cathleen."
"Cathleen."
Maeve laughs. Small. Wet. Real. She says, "Six PM."
"Six PM."
? ? ?
My mother's apartment at 6:14 PM is the apartment I have been seeing in my head since approximately Day fifteen of being married to Maeve, which is the version where the Konstantinos and the O'Brien families are in the same kitchen at the same time, and nobody is staging anything operational, and nobody is talking about Bratva.
Cathleen is at the kitchen island with my mother. Both in their good dresses. My mother is in the Navy. Cathleen is in a soft gray cardigan over a cream blouse, pearls at her throat, the Florida-retiree formal that means ‘I have flown up for a thing, and I am committing to the thing.’ They are drinking small cups of Greek coffee from the gold-rimmed set my mother has used since I was a child. There is an open tin of ‘kourabiedes’ on the counter. Cathleen has eaten three. She’s, by my mother's count, made encouraging noises about all three.
Stavros is at the stove.
Stavros made the lamb at his apartment in the South End at 4:00 PM, transported it in the cast-iron pan he carries to family dinners, and is reheating it slowly with the unhurried patience of a man who has been making this dish since he was eleven and is not going to be rushed by a kitchen full of in-laws.
Sofia, six months old, is in a highchair Stavros set up beside the kitchen island. She’s eating mashed sweet potato off Siobhan's spoon. She’s the most beautiful baby in the room and she knows it. She watches Cormac across the room with the gravity of a federal prosecutor.
